CAL denies doctor and nurse flight home on Mother’s Day

THE EDITOR: Open letter to Prime Minister Dr Rowley.

Did you not make it clear that essential workers are to be given first priority in travelling?

Is this not the sole purpose that the air and sea bridges are kept open and as such Caribbean Airlines Ltd (CAL), the Inter-Island Ferry Service and PTSC have been mandated to provide services?

On Mother’s Day a frontline Tobagonian nurse and an A&E doctor who both live in Tobago and work in Trinidad were deprived of being able to go home while non-essential passengers were allowed to travel on the airbridge.

After putting our lives at risk working away from home and caring for the sick at different government emergency health facilities for several days, culminating in an exhausting graveyard shift, we anticipated going home on our day off and hustled a taxi to get to the airport.

We got to the airport 35 minutes before departure and CAL staff (who were not wearing face masks) refused to let us on the flight despite we having confirmed bookings and the aircraft being less than half full. They admitted allowing non-essential people on.

We explained to the supervisor that because we could not abandon the non-stop flow of emergency patients and having to hustle limited available transportation it was impossible to check in online.

The response was the usual uncaring pre-covid19 attitude.

The result was we had to once again hustle for limited unsanitised, non-physical distancing, unsafe transportation and to search for places to stay in Trinidad.

There was absolutely no concern for the fact that there is only one flight to Tobago, no PTSC bus to Piarco on weekends and that the ferry leaves in the afternoon, getting to Tobago at night. Our day was wasted, we got no rest and it was back to work the next day.

Who is responsible for co-ordinating and controlling these power abusers? Why are the flight, ferry and PTSC schedules not being made to accommodate healthcare workers?

It’s back to the business-as-usual attitude now there’s the false perception that there is no longer a danger and need for healthcare workers.

How do they justfy being paid for a full day’s work to run one flight a day, which is supposed to be to accommodate essential workers yet deny frontline healthcare workers that very service?

What was the urgency? It was the only flight for the day and it was Sunday – Mother’s Day?

The nurse was denied her Mother’s Day at home with her husband and children. Would they have done what they did to a magistrate, police, coast guardsman, judge, or politician? No

Could you imagine the nurse telling her patients: “Sorry, you knew you had signs of covid19 but took too long to develop shortness of breath. Come back tomorrow morning for the oxygen.”

Or: “You knew it is Mother’s Day, why did you get stung by a scorpion? We are about to change shifts in the next 45 minutes but because of the lockdown we will not be able to treat you today. Come back tomorrow.”

Over the past few weeks similar treatment has been dished out to me on the ferry and buses.

Are they trained to understand that besides infectious outbreaks and pandemics, when a mass casualty occurs it is we the essential healthcare workers who are supposed to be able to save lives and limbs? How can we if we are exhausted, demotivated and unhealthy?

Should we allow these ever increasing hard-hearted callous acts to blunt and sour our willingness to continue selfless service to God and man?

FITZROY ARMOUR

via e-mail